Early944 Turbo

Who has any info or where can i find info on EARLY 944 Turbos , Prototypes, etc.
Looking to see if i can find one that is older than mine ( serial # 150014 US Car )
I have owned the Car since 1990 ( No sunroof , Sportseats and very few options ).
There are many differences from this car to a regular 944 turbo .
When i checked the Serial # with Porsche they dont have a record of this car being sold thru regular channels

Turbopower I know of a few early 951 turbo cars that were '86 model year cars but were pre-production. These cars tend to be rougher hand built examples for press and test drives being available as early as spring of 1985 shortly after the NA 1985 1/2 944 came out! If I remember correctly the tell tell sign of the NON race early 944 turbos was the early 83 - 85 sport seats.

The 1986 951 Escort or CUP cars were all white and sold through dealers of the day who had a good relationship with Porsche and I only know of a dozen or so exsisting. Sunroof delete, NO sound deadening or underbody coating, lightweight carpet, black plastic mirrors, Manual roll up windows!

On a side note prototypes of the 951 have been readily known to have been raced here at Nelson Ledges and a few other tracks as early as Summer of 1983 and spring of 1984 by the likes of Holbert and Miledge! They were much the same as the 1986 model year car with the updated dash and body panels and after the races they were sent back to Germany to be taken apart by the engineers so that a better car could be built.

It would be interesting to see pictures of the interior, exterior, and engine also to get the #'s off the option code sticker, or if one does not exist stuck to the rear body of the car next to the drivers tailight or in the first page of the owners manual! If either of these are not available what is the full vin# and or the # stamped in the steel body right under the folding rear seat back! This one is hard to find but its about in the center line of the car a little toward the drivers side and stamped directly into a flap of steel that runs under the rear seat back where the hatch carpet meets the rear bottom seat covers tucked under upholstery!

As mentioned above, various prototypes were raced in '83 (Fred Baker had the car), '84 (again raced by Baker), and '85 (2 cars, Baker and Brumos - noteably driven by Price Cobb and E. F. Robinson) at the Nelson Ledges 24 hour race and a couple SCCA Escort races. Basically pre-production cars. The Club Sports imported for '86 were "cup" type and had more deviations from production cars (motorsports parts).

No evidence that the 86 CS's had a special series of VINs for these cars (the 87+ cups and club sports had unique VIN sequence numbers). VIN pic below is of one the Rick Hurst 86 Club Sports. The only other VIN I know from the 86 Escorts is WP0AA0957GN150345.

The factory has retained the first 0080 vin numbers for there own use, in other words at any given time during pre- production or after they can give one of there cars or a high profile customer a special car with one of these vin #'s. It has been typical fashion since around 1980 when Porsche switched over to this newer vin type to use the first 10 or so #'s for themselves for prototype testing and race mules of some sort. It was also known that out of the first 80 cars there were some that were destroyed for different crash testing and such. Also I have seen some factory race cars carry these low 3's. But again the WPOAA is just the North America/Canada cars as well as maybe Mexico/South America!

The factory controlled those early cars very heavily so I doubt that they even still exist they were most likely destroyed after they were disassembled in Germany! There might be one left in the factory Museum.

If your car has been one of those early '86 cars that was built in early '85 then maybe it will have the build code in the engine compartment next to the fuse panel in the upper right hand corner of a black sticker!

Is the car you speak about in good condition for its age? Or is it appear to be used hard at an early age?
Underneath the car does it have just a painted steel shell in body color or is there lots of built up undercoating?

I would love to hear more details or see pics of the car. Doug have you seen it or know of it?

Its unfortunate that many of the guys that were into these rare prototypes, cup cars or club sport varients in the '80's are very closed lip about them. You have to know them to get the stories or pictures because when they were doing this stuff over 20 years ago they didnt get many pictures or stop to look around much. It was a busy time for them all and the cars and parts are long gone by now. They are wrecked or destroyed, or sold and turned into someone elses race car! There very rare and I love hearing and seeing as much of these facts as possible!

I have not seen it in person yet, but we have talked for a few hours while he came and picked up pieces of my car.

The VIN thing is VERY interesting with this car. It has one VIN stamped on the normal firewall area, then directly below it is a diff #. Only ONE of these numbers gives any search results for history, the other number, even Porsche can not find history on.

My 1986 was shipped with no sunroof, no air conditioning, manual seats and I believe non-power windows. The car now has power windows but a previous owner installed them and didn't get it quite right (sloppy and switches backward). I plan to revert to manual windows when I get a chance.

I have some documentation that came with my car from Porsche about being an Escort class car. Could your car be part of the same series?